I am not sure it's healthy to have listened to One by U2 quite so often as I have. I'm approaching 60 repeats in total. It's almost as bad as that evening where I listened to nothing but Hallelujah as I was writing some crap or other

I have in my rather large hands, season 1 of BSG and I am perfectly willing to be all converted for a show which has not actually been cancelled yet. Where should I go for shininess?

* * *The pairing meme:Comment with any ship from a fandom that you know I like, or at least have some knowledge about. I will ramble for 100some words about aforementioned ship. This may be incoherent gushing or exclamations of disgust, depending on what it is.

Feel free to comment if you want. Will do any fandom.

For cofax7, JACK / DANIELI watched two hours of Stargate at tea time just in preparation for this. Well, okay, I watched it because I was eating my dinner (season three and garlic lamb stir-fry, thanks for asking). Daniel and Jack is another one of those cases of apparent opposites attracting that fandom just loves.

However, I see them as similar in many ways. I once read in some smart piece of XF fanfic or other about people not seeking their opposites but their isomers, all the same chemical formula, different order of atoms. Both Jack and Daniel are smart, though Jack plays stupid. Jack's career has given his intelligence a very practical bent, but Daniel's not too shabby in that department either.

Both have a willingness, even joy in evading the rules. Daniel seems to be the empath and more willing to admit his feelings -- but given a prod or forced into closeness that makes him uncomfortable, he can erect walls just as easily as Jack. As for Jack, sometimes you can almost see the invisible moat around the man. Calibrations of temperament and circumstance aside, they're pretty similar. Or at least they are when fanfiction writers don't make Daniel a 15-year-old girl stewing in hormones.

Are they a plausible couple? Hmmm. Yes, but it's take a lot to get them there, because I can't quite see how they would move from their spark-filled friendship to coupledom given the circumstances in which they find themselves and the aforementioned invisible moats.

I could far more easily see an OT3 with Sam (though I wouldn't want Teal'c to be left out). Possibly an OT3/4 with strandings, death, disaster and a bit of hurt/comfort. Feel free to point me in that sort of fanfic direction.

For leadenskyJACK/KATEI've watched maybe three hours of Lost, last year, so I know I am speaking from complete ignorance when I think of Jack and Kate as the Clark and Lana of Lost, the couple who are Made For Each Other and the ostensible star pairing of the show when really a lot of other relationships are far more interesting and less obvious. Luckily it seems that Lost is not sucking as much ignoring the ensemble possibilities as much as Smallville.

I am led to believe there is some sort of triangle thing going on with Kate, Sawyer and Jack and that Sawyer is a wrong 'un.

And that Charlie is cute and has many, many fans, who were very upset when he suffered from a bad case of dead a while back. Also, there is Naveen Andrews, who has been beautiful on TV screens since The Buddha of Suburbia. Terry O'Quinn! Hawaii! And now my slight knowledge of Lost is exhausted.

… and DIANA / MULDERGod, I hated all that Fowl One bollocks. What are we, five?

If this had been explored properly, it could have been a great addition to the show. Any person who was watching from the beginning could not fail to be intrigued by what Mulder was like when he was profiling wonder boy and he was with Diana right when he switched from that role to reassigning himself to the X-Files. The idea of Mulder's trust in others leading him up the garden path was played in a very conventional love triangle sort of way that was just annoying and a waste of a decent actress.

How much more fascinating would it have been if we were encouraged to like Diana, and found even Scully with nothing against her but suspicion and *then* we were smacked in the face with betrayal?

I may be alone in that I would have liked for Mulder and Diana to rekindle their romance slowly and then have it all go kaboom, but that would have required sophisticated arc plotting and a sense of how women operate that was not entirely drawn from the writers watching bad 1930s movies and reading a copy of Cosmo while taking a dump.

Also, it would have worked better if she hadn't been shot at the end of Season Five then turned up in season six with it barely being mentioned again. * * *

For unwinding, CJ/TOBYThis is a pairing I love, though all thoughts here come from S1-4. Don't have five on DVD, haven't seen six at all.

Sneaky hints in canon point to an affair in the past that ended in friendship but there's an loving friendship and occasional glimpse of glowing embers that suggests the affair could be rekindled as soon as the business of running the country is out of the way.

CJ likes and respects him, enjoys his idealism and respects his point of view even when she doesn't share it (she's much more pragmatic). The roadblock is, I think, Toby. I think he expects romantic love to be hard, relationships to be combative and difficult and he takes no prisoners. He puts the brutal in brutally honest at times and he's devoted to his job. In his interactions with Andy, you see that she's tired of the way his anger and intensity levels are set so high, even though it's not violent or necessarily directed at her. I think he was attracted to her because of the amount of fight in her and was probably surprised when she backed off.

CJ, on the other hand, is easy for him to love. She's smart and articulate -- those two attributes that he values so highly -- makes him laugh, shares his idealism and his values and once he gets past a certain point, she won't fight with him. It's not that she cedes ground necessarily, just that she sees he's moving towards being unreasonable and she won't fight.

If he could get past the point where he needs every day to be a battle in order to motivate himself, I think he could find a lasting happiness -- and perhaps more importantly, peace -- with CJ.* * *

And finally, saving my favourite to last, for comiceMULDER / SCULLYI never did understand the people who were all "Mulder and Scully are just perfect for each other!" because if ever there was a pairing who were not perfect for each other, it's this one. Unable to be without each other, sure. Destined, possibly. Perfect, no. In fact Skinner's a better pairing for both of 'em, in terms of personality.

In the ways that they think and act, they're startlingly incompatible -- he can be careless, rash and offhand with the feelings of those who are close to him, she can be cold, unbending and dismissive -- but in the best episodes you see the meeting of lively minds and the shared structure of values that underpins a true and steadfast love that developed very early on and never really went away.

The thing I like about this relationship is that they so very work at understanding each other, it's a work in progress every day.

It's impossible to talk about this relationship without noting that the natural trajectory of the storylines about Mulder's search for family and Scully's search for a meaning to all their lives suggested that the culmination of the show should be about sorting out all that aliens malarkey *and* Mulder and Scully realising that sublimation wasn't going to cut it any longer.

If the show had ended at Redux II, with Mulder's search for Samantha reaching a conclusion, but him symbolically regaining his family in Scully and Scully regaining her faith, its critical reputation would be far less tarnished.

As it is, it stands as the perfect example of a showrunner not having a fucking clue *why* his show worked.

Ah, I see Kat got to you first. If it's not up there (which it probably is), run right out and read katie_m's In the Wrong Story and troyswann's The Dirt of Sowing and Reaping. I love them both to death, to death I say, and they're simply marvelous.

But I remember not whether you've seen any of the series yet, for lo, my brain is like onto a sieve.

Anyway. Places to go for discussions:

13th_colony is a good discussion list with spoiler policy in accordance with the American airing. We're almost done with the first season run -- the finale is this Friday. Nice, meaty discussions, friendly & civil.

bsg2003chatter is a discussion community for the UK and other folks who've seen all of the series so far. Haven't been there yet so cannot vouch for content.

Ron Moore, the creator of the new BSG, keeps a blog that's informative and entertaining.

For fic: bsg2003fics. Some middling, a few outstanding fic. Crack Van has a few recommended stories, which I found kind of hit-and-miss.

Many thanks. I got the DVDs of the miniseries and Season 1 in the post this morning and I watched a couple of other episodes that I liked -- 33 and, um, another with Leoben being drowned or something -- but kept forgetting to tape while I was out at work.

In addition to the communities above, hit rheanna27's LJ. She's written a couple of terrific pieces (including a "five things" story for Roslin that makes me want to Curl Up And Never Write Again, not even to sign a check), and she's currently writing a story that, when it comes out, will rock the entire world like a rocking thing. (It is difficult to provide coherent beta for a story this good, because I'm mostly "AAAAH!" and "MORE!" and "OMG, if you don't tell me where this is going I will have to KILL you.")

bsg_creative is a quiet little comm. The mods are a bit strict but thar be excellent fic.

As it is, it stands as the perfect example of a showrunner not having a fucking clue *why* his show worked.oh, WORD, wordity-mcWord! They stretched it out perfectly and then for some reason just got stupid!!

Thank you, by the way. I tend to agree with you about the likelihood of Jack/Daniel ever happening within the constraints of canon. I read it anyway, but the ones I like the best are like Anna's No Man is an Angler and agentotter's A Congregation of Days, which take them out of the constraints of here and now and make them deal.

If the show had ended at Redux II, with Mulder's search for Samantha reaching a conclusion, but him symbolically regaining his family in Scully and Scully regaining her faith, its critical reputation would be far less tarnished.

I still think the show could have finished out its 7 seasons and then spun off the New Kids, but there's no question that the number of quality episodes continued to diminish and the show just became such a mish mash.

As for your assessment of M & S? YES! With one little caveat. I don't think that having Diana and Mulder go back into a r-ship would have worked as a storyline, mostly because I felt that DD chose to play it as if Mulder realized that he was in love with Scully in S5. Because of that, I would have had a hard time accepting him being seduced by a former lover, and because I've watched far too much soap opera in my day, I'd have been suspicious of her motives from the beginning. I mean, let's face it: whenever the ex-wife or old love shows up, she has a nefarious design. It would, ultimately, have been yet another enormous time waster on the show.

Not that the latter seasons of the show weren't full of wasted time and missed opportunities, but ...